﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿What's on my mind?﻿﻿﻿

Chapter 1: Last Saturday morning, a half-grown black cat leapt to my porch and rubbed against my legs. I fed him and watered him and petted him. He showed up every night for a week. I kept our relationship cordial but distant, like when you work with somebody you don't like, because I don’t want another cat. See, I know myself. I don’t visit pet adoption web sites. I flip past the daily humane society ad in the newspaper with a picture and story about a feline who needs a home. It would be easy for me to become a Crazy Cat Lady. So I just don't go there. Still, I'm a nice guy. I posted the cat’s picture on my neighborhood Facebook page, but whoever dumped him wanted him to stay dumped. Nobody contacted me. I considered continuing to feed him at night but not letting him into the house, even though it will be snowing here in about, oh, a couple of weeks, and winter here is hard on—if not deadly for--outdoor cats. So I looked up how to make a feral cat shelter out of a Styrofoam meat mailing container. I have one in the garage. I considered bringing the cat to the Humane Association, but according to an article at huffpost, black cats are less than half as likely to be adopted as others, although one study debunks that idea. It's also true that some people who’ve heard that black cats have a hard time being adopted set out deliberately to adopt one. Yet every year, 6.5 million animals enter animal shelters; my stray would make that 6.5 million and one. Our local shelter takes in up to ten cats a day. The longest resident has been there a year. She’s black. Some organizations feature “adopt a mini-panther” promotions; some don’t allow black cats to be adopted during October for fear of animal abuse. What if my stray wasn't adopted for twelve weeks until he suddenly became the perfect pet for a psycho around Halloween? How could I risk that? Like Elliot says in E.T. "He came to me." Not all cultures revile black cats. In Japan, a woman with a black cat can expect to have many suitors. According to Scottish lore, a black cat appearing at your house leads to great wealth. That sounds dandy.

Chapter 2: Last night, I opened my door, and In Came the Stranger. I introduced him to my other cats and to Homer, my sweet, patient Golden Retriever, who, if he were human, would be that guy who lets his toddlers dance on his belly because they like playing with dad and he likes the exercise for his abs. He was inside all night. So far, fur has not flown. Everybody remains cautious around the new guy, who is old enough to be cautious himself but young enough to adapt to a new living situation, according to my vet. A bonus for him is that I have an outdoor play cage we call the Catio. Part of the Catio completely surrounds a cat egress window. Steps climb to a tunnel, which leads to a 4X4X8 cage on the patio. The cats can come and go as they please, and I don’t have to worry about their roaming or decimating the bird population or getting run over. The Catio will be balm for a kitty used to the rough-and-tumble of outdoor life. Or, if you insist, a cat used to Freedom. Chapter 3: He's going to my vet on Tuesday for a checkup and a snip-snip, so I’m already thinking about names. Here is a long list, but I don’t name a black cat every day, nor do I expect to name another. "Sucker" is not on the list because that's my nickname. Which name do you like? Ebony Tattoo Comely Johnny Cash Bosco Pepsi Jet Inky James Bond Angus BC (for black Cat) Crow or Bear Jack Tails (black tie and tails) Dusty Felix Sirius Padfoot Harry Potter Licorice Mr. Black Panther Puma Phantom Poe Spot Sharpie Smudge Tarmac Blacktop Nighteyes Ollie (black olive) Gunpowder Bruce Wayne Tarbaby Tux Ya-Ya (Egyptian for "gift") Whitey Cricket ---foreign words for "black: Preto (Portuguese), Kuro (Japanese), Siyah (Turkish) Sulu Bart Denzel Domino Wolfman TornadoLATER: It looks like his name will be none of the above. My son likes "Coffee Bean," Beaner for short.

In 1969, comedienne Lily Tomlin joined the cast of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, where she introduced Ernestine, a telephone operator with a Forties hairdo, a laugh that was a series of snorts, and an arrogant attitude toward customers that reflected AT&T’s monopoly over phone service. Ma Bell’s control over people’s ringie-dingies lasted for 40 years until 1974, when an antitrust lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice led to the breakup of the Bell System in 1984. A lot has changed in the 30 years since then. Now, nearly one million phone lines are being disconnected every month, a statistic provided in a May 2010 online piece by Bob Adelmann, “The Breakup of Ma Bell” in The New American. Now, Adelmann says, the internet connects a quarter of the world’s population. Now, AT&T’s Bottom Line requires it to care. And, oh, it does. In three days, the phone company will send a worker to my house install a faster modem. I hadn’t intended to make a change; I detest having to adjust to new technology. I waited five years longer than I should have to buy a new computer because I didn’t want to have to move my files or adjust to a new system. (Go ahead, roll your eyes, you won’t be the first. And since you’re already tut-tutting, you might as well know that I still don’t own a cell phone either. Originally, it was because of the expense. Then it was because I liked knowing that if I was out and about, I was invisible since nobody could get hold of me for any reason. And now? Reasons One and Two still apply.) Initially, I was forced to call AT&T about an email issue where a file of digitized historic photos was stuck in a Cloud fart so it duplicated itself every time I logged on. If I didn’t call, pretty soon I’d be getting scores of downloads of the same email, which would be scores-plus-one more historic photos than I’d needed in the first place. So I bit the bullet and dialed. “Ken” was helpful, even though I couldn’t answer my Security Question because the 1960s TV kick I’d been on at the time I recorded my Security answer had long since passed, and I had no clue what answer I’d provided. (Ken, if you’re reading this, I thought of my Security answer half a day later.) Not only did Ken resolve my problem, but he also passed me over to Stephanie, who looked at my record and noted in a revolted tone—can a voice roll its eyes?--that I currently had one of their slowest internet plans: I could download less than one megabyte per second. Oh, the horror! The fact is, a slow download time HAS been horrible. I research as I write, so when I’m on a Roll and I have to look up something, by the time I type my query in a search box and wait for the hits to line up, I’ve semi-forgotten why I needed to know whatever it was. My Roll nose-dives into the ditch. Which is why I’m looking forward to Tuesday, when my download time will rev up to three megabytes per second. The switch will require my commitment to a phone plan that limits me to 200 minutes a month (Is that a lot or a little? I have no idea how many minutes I spend per month on the phone, but since I’d rather gnaw on a hangnail than talk on the phone, I suspect 200 minutes will be plenty.) The point is, my choosing to byte the bullet and embrace change means fewer Rolls nose-diving, greater productivity, and a lower phone bill. I hope. What’s your experience with communications technology?

The first section in The Sun Magazine I devour each month is "Readers Write." If I open the magazine at the mailbox, I don't always make it back inside the house right away. I stand on the porch and read (although this never happens when the Polar Vortex is in town). What I like about "Readers Write" is that every single piece is by an ordinary human being writing straight from the heart about something that's important to him. Prisoners. Housewives. House husbands. Grannies. Teen-agers. The poor. The rich. What thrills is the humanness, the common thread, the way the pieces show we are more alike than we are different. How does it work?The magazine provides a broad topic, and readers can submit whatever the topic inspires. For example, "Late at Night" might motivate one person to write a memory about her dad coming home after the graveyard shift and how she felt safe only after she'd heard his shoes drop beside his bed. Or "Late at Night" might inspire somebody else to talk about reading under the covers with a flashlight. "Late at Night" might open the door for somebody else to write about hiding in the closet until her abusive husband falls asleep. Anything goes as long as it's on topic. Also, The Sun says, "Writing style isn't as important as thoughtfulness and sincerity." You don't even have to type your piece if you can't, but you do have to send it snail-mail to: Readers Write The Sun 107 N. Roberson St. Chapel Hill, NC 27516The Deadline for submissions on each topic is six months before publication.

Upcoming Topics are below, separated from the deadline and publication date by a slash:

We whose books are set in the past are indebted to the thousands of people whose passion for history creates in them an irresistible urge to share what they've learned. Two Englishwomen I'd like to tip my hat to today are Marion Hearfield and Lucy Inglis.Marion Hearfield is the author of William Cowle of Stroud: Life in a Victorian Town. She and her husband maintain a web site here. I discovered Marion when I wanted to know how milk was sold in London in the 18th century. I knew milkmaids trundled about with yokes over their shoulders, but I didn't know exactly how the milk got from the cows (wherever they were stabled) to the milkmaids. Mrs. Hearfield's article told me, and it linked me to extra information for good measure. So charmed was I by her lucid and slightly sassy style that I emailed to thank her. She wrote back, and a sporadic trans-Atlantic correspondence began. When I discover information or a web site I think she'll find interesting (such as this one about period slang), I share. When I want advice about anything English, Marion shares her 2 cents. We're an ocean apart, but if we were next-door neighbors, I know that dear lady would be the recipient of raspberries and tomatoes from my garden.

The second Englishwoman who'd score tomatoes and raspberries if we lived closer is Lucy Inglis, who blogs here. Ms. Inglis is the author of Georgian London: Into the streets, which I had to buy a hard copy of when she said about her book "the ordinary people were my quarry." My mother taught history, and that was her interest too--not just the battles or the politics, but what people blew their noses with and how shoes were repaired. My mentor, University of Kansas historian Calder Pickett, was the same way. The inside jacket flap of Ms. Inglis's book says it is about "the men and women who called London their home, from dukes and artists to rent boys, dog-nappers and hot-air balloonists." The book is divided into geographical neighborhoods of London, and it offers page after page of evidence that the more things change, the more they stay the same. In Georgian London, for example, the vast majority of urban poor were single mothers. And if you think the phenomenon "Crazy Cat Lady" is new, check out chapter 4. The book lavishly quotes from source documents--AND it includes pictures.These two ladies' scholarship, love of history, and effortless style make research fun. Thanks, you two. More resources to come.

Not exactly. But they CAN see things humans can't. According to the National Wildlife Federation website article on the subject, birds can see ultraviolet (UV) light; night fliers like owls see UV light more clearly than visible light.Why does that matter (and why do I care)? Jem, a Fugitive from London, includes scenes where more than one bird carries a human passenger. I wanted to know what the passenger would see if she were--wait for it--winging it. What would a human see from a bird's-eye view? She'd see other birds' feathers glowing. Urine trails left by small mammals, glowing. Patches on potential mates glowing, the bigger the patch, the more attractive the mate. Some birds lay their eggs in another species' nest and expect the foster parents to raise their young. But the victims of nest parasites sometimes can tell which eggs are theirs and which were laid by interlopers because the shells glow differently--so the potential adoptive parents can push out the offender's eggs.Ever watch a parent bird feed a chick? Ever wonder how the parent knew which chick hadn't been fed on the last trip back to the nest with a tidbit? Turns out the chicks' beaks and feathers glow brighter if they're heavier and healthier--so mommy and daddy bird know which chick needs a snack RIGHT NOW.And speaking of snacks: certain insects glow. Seeds glow. Green leaves do not, so birds more easily can find berries--which DO glow--hidden amongst them.Why can't we see UV light but birds can? According to the article, "The human retina has three kinds of cone cells (receptors used for color vision): red, green and blue. By contrast, birds active during the day have four kinds, including one that’s specifically sensitive to UV wavelengths. There’s another difference: In birds, each cone cell contains a tiny drop of colored oil that human cells lack. The oil drop functions much like a filter on a camera lens."You can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs, and you can't write a book without learning fascinating stuff.

If you really want to know what it was like to live in the 18th century, visit the home of Dennis Severs in the Spitalfields district of London. For 25 years, Severs has lived in a Georgian house without electricity or indoor plumbing (except for a cold-water pipe in the kitchen). If he needs to use a room in the house, he builds a fire for heat. He does have a cell phone and a typewriter and refrigerator hidden away behind screens and cupboard doors. Living in the house and taking care of it is a full-time job for Mr. Severs, who makes his living conducting tours of his home (appointments required). Read more here.